The Ogre of Oglefort

CHAPTER 19 Whipple Road

When Ivo was not returned to the children’s home on the day he was due back, the principal sent around the orphanage secretary to investigate.

The secretary banged on the door but nobody came. Mr. Prendergast was at work and Gladys was under her stone in the backyard. In any case even in her heyday when she was properly magical, Gladys had never been able to open doors.

So the secretary went away and came back the next day and the next, but still she couldn’t get in. By now the principal of the orphanage was worried. It was true that Ivo was only one of eighty-seven boys in the Home and she’d never noticed him particularly, but that wasn’t the point. A child in her care was missing and something had to be done about it.

So she came back with the secretary after working hours, and this time she found Mr. Prendergast at home. The enchantress and the henkies had moved in with friends, but kind Mr. Prendergast had stayed to look after the house.

“I’m afraid they have gone on a mission,” he explained, “and the boy is with them. I’ve been expecting them back every day but there has been no sign of them.”

The principal was absolutely outraged. “They had absolutely no right to take Ivo,” she said. “It amounts to kidnapping.”

At this point Mrs. Brainsweller, who had seen the orphanage van, came running in from two doors down with her hair flying and said her son, too, had disappeared.

“I managed to keep contact with him till a few days ago, but now he’s been blotted out,” she said. “Absolutely blotted! There’s a horrid gray mist over his face.”

So the head of the orphanage, who obviously thought that Mrs. Brainsweller’s son was a little boy, too, went to the police, and they put up posters with very strange descriptions of the Hag and the troll (but no photographs because neither of them would ever have their pictures taken). The notice was headed CHILD SNATCHERS and underneath it said: HAVE YOU SEEN THESE PEOPLE? IF SO, DO NOT APPROACH THEM — THEY ARE HIGHLY DANGEROUS, BUT CONTACT YOUR NEAREST POLICE STATION IMMEDIATELY.

There was also a very smudged photograph of Ivo taken on a school picnic with thirty other children and an arrow which said: THE MISSING BOY. (Actually the arrow was pointing to a boy called Bernard Sloope, but this is the kind of thing that happens in school photographs.)

But nobody came forward, so Ivo was put on the Missing Persons Register. Nor was there a reward for anyone coming to the police with information, because he was only an orphan and not a prince.